bengriffin's reviews
2676 reviews

It's loud, crass, kinda dumb, and not what I normally enjoy, but after reading the seriousness of Sandman again it was quite refreshing and fun. I'll stick with the series for a bit and see where it goes.

I know it's stupid to criticise Ray Bradbury for writing about space too much, but when you have a man whose body tells all manner of stories via its tattoos it's very strange that they're all about rockets. I never fully managed to get past that fact, even though it's just a method of tying the stories together. Once he gets into the book he forgets about the man of the title anyway and just gets on with the stories until the bolted on epilogue. Clearly, the age Bradbury grew up in meant he was fascinated by space and the possibilities, but as someone who isn't a great fan of full on sci-fi I did find it quite off putting. Most of the stories are great reflections of the human condition, I just yearned for more variety in the settings. That's my problem though. It's a decent and easy read and presents some interesting ideas, powerful imagery, and well told stories, so if you can cope with everything being confined to the vastness of space, you'll more than likely enjoy this.

The stark, detailed, black and white artwork is both beautiful and frequently disturbing, but the story just didn't do very much for me.

An endearing and strong female lead and some of the finest, evocative descriptions I have read in years. The film feels very thin and lacking by comparison so get reading.

This is the first Manga I've read and unfortunately it didn't do much for me. I thought the art was pretty poor and had too much visual noise to tell what was going on a lot of the time, but that could just be because I am too much of an old man these days. The characters, bar a few, are mostly indistinguishable from each other and the dialogue is poor and contains plenty of heavy handed exposition making it hard to invest or care about anyone. That said, the premise is quite interesting and it is unfair to judge the series by the first volume as it can usually takes a while for it to find its feet, so I will give it the benefit of the doubt and see where it goes.

Instantly better than the first volume, in part due to fleshing out the characters a bit more. Whilst the art still isn't great there seems to be a lot less visual noise littering the pages in this one and in some places the panel beats are used to much greater dramatic effect. There's enough curiosity about what is actually going on that if I owned volume 3 I would immediately continue. Sadly, I haven't enjoyed it enough to want to buy any more, so unless someone lends them to me I will never find out. Either way is fine by me.

This is a solid yarn with plenty to appreciate, in particular the real world setting and grounded, plausible horror. The artwork compliments the series well with a washed out dusty quality and the covers in particular are especially striking. The main problems are that there's very little impact, the story is incredibly predictable, and very little will remain with you afterwards. This is unfortunate for any story, but moreso for a horror whose sole purpose is to get under your skin. There's a lot worse things you could read, but there's also a lot better.